There’s an awful lot wrong with the newly released Twitter from a UI perspective. Sure, it’s interesting, but it’s not good. It trades window chrome for marginally more vertical space. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but Twitter’s pursuit of a clean, minimal interface goes too far.
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Arguing over issues like lack of HIG-compliance fundamentally misses the problem with Twitter for Mac, however: the app is badly designed for unimpaired users, and a disaster for the visually-impaired.
From the geek perspective, Mike is totally on point. That said, John Gruber is also right. The point is that most people don’t really care. I pointed out the other day that most of us stress way too much over stuff. Koralatov is totally right, Twitter for Mac’s UI craps all over Apple’s HIG. Yep. But it’s still the best Twitter client for the Mac.
The way to look at this kind of stuff as follows: What works best? Then (and only then), what fits into my OS best?1
I don’t care how well something adheres to the HIG—if it’s it a turd, it’s a turd. If a Twitter client comes out that’s just as good as Twitter for Mac and follows the standard Apple UI conventions, I will happily switch.
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That’s not completely true. I stuck by Safari and iChat, even when they both were far behind the curve in their respective fields. Luckily, that’s not the case anymore. ↩
